Review: How Race Is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses

How Race Is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses by Mark M. Smith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Mark M. Smith covers a fascinating topic of how the senses play a large part in racial stereotyping. Covering the colonial era and slavery through the mid-20th century, just after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Smith discusses how all of the senses played a part in segregationist's views and prejudices. For many whites at the time, seeing sometimes failed to distinguish black and white, as mixed race descendants blurred the line of racial separation. Even if sight could distinguish between the races, sound and more especially smell gave the segregationist reason for continued division. They reasoned that blacks were inferior because they smelled and sounded different. Further, they believed blacks were more sexual and to be feared because of their inferiority. Smith showed how sensory racial stereotyping led to irrational fears in politics, religion, everyday life, and of course, in the fight for integration and civil rights.

Although this book covers the ideology of generations past, the theme still resonates today. How often do we use all of our senses to make snap decisions and form opinions today? If someone speaks differently than ourselves, do we make certain assumptions about that person? If we meet a stranger with sweaty body odor, do we assume they are dirty people or do we consider that they just finished some grueling physical work? Do those assumptions play into our prejudice of just that one person or on a broader scale of "people like them?"

This book really makes you think about how your own thoughts about other people, your own prejudices, as well as giving the reader new insights into the racial prejudices of a different era and how we went from slavery to civil rights and beyond. This should be required reading, especially for the student of southern history and civil rights.

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